The
Middle East and Africa (MEA) enterprise hardware market, comprising servers and
external storage, continues to stagnate, with year-on-year growth of just 2.8%
recorded for Q2 2013, according to the latest insights from International Data
Corporation (IDC).
Referencing
its 'EMEA Quarterly Server and Disk Storage Systems Tracker', the research firm
today announced that enterprise revenue in MEA totalled $663.4 million for the
quarter, with infrastructure deals in the oil and gas, telecommunications, and
banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) verticals accounting for much
of that figure.
Continuing social and political unrest across much
of the region acted as a severe inhibitor to enterprise investment, according
to Zeeshan Gaya, research manager for systems and infrastructure solutions at
IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey: "Ongoing instability in several parts
of the Middle East and Africa region caused enterprise spending to slow down,
while large projects within the government sector, traditionally one of the
major investors in servers and storage, were put on hold."
The MEA region’s x86 server market witnessed a 5.2%
year-on-year increase in
value but a 5.4% decline in unit terms during the
second quarter of 2013. "This growth in the x86 server market's value, as
well as the corresponding decline in volume, can be attributed to the adoption
of virtualization technologies that utilize fewer server units than traditional
data centres," adds Gaya.
The region's external storage market experienced
subtle growth of 3.0% year on year in Q2 2013. ''Barring a few bright spots in
the region, most of the bigger countries witnessed a decline in storage
investment during this quarter, with pipeline projects remaining
uninitiated," says Swapna Subramani, a senior research analyst at IDC
Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "However, key infrastructure projects in
the region tend to be implemented toward the second half of the year."
The enterprise hardware market in the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) countries registered mixed results in Q2 2013 with
the UAE and Saudi Arabia seeing a decline while smaller countries like Oman and
Bahrain posted exceptional growth, bolstered by projects in the oil and gas and
telecommunications verticals, respectively. Qatar and Kuwait also witnessed
healthy growth, owing to infrastructure investments across various verticals.
North Africa (specifically, Morocco, Algeria, and
Tunisia) witnessed healthy year-on-year growth of 14.4% in Q2 2013 after
experiencing successive declining quarters. This growth can be specifically
attributed to investments within the telecommunications vertical across the
region, as well as to a few significant oil and gas deals in Morocco. The South
African enterprise market declined markedly in Q2 2013, suffering a
considerable contraction of 11.4% year on year. Egypt's enterprise hardware
market shrunk 15.8% over the same period, owing to curbs on spending across
most verticals, with investments limited to just a few enterprises from the
very large businesses segment. ''The country’s continued political turmoil
means our outlook for Egypt is bearish for the rest of the year,'' Subramani
adds.
On the supply side, HP retained top spot among the
vendors competing in the MEA server market in Q2 2013 with 37.6% market share.
IBM and Dell followed in second and third place, respectively. Cisco's
performance was the bright spot in the MEA server market of Q2 2013, with the
vendor recording an 89.4% increase in revenue year on year to claim share from
the market leaders following the adoption of an aggressive blade server
strategy for the region. EMC continued its dominance within the external
storage market, claiming 46.3% share of the total disk storage. IBM and HP
followed in second and third place, respectively.
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